Question About Snap Caps

This is a discussion on Question About Snap Caps within the General Firearm Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; I've seen a couple of different brands of snap caps in my travels. One brand's product looks transparant and you can see a spring inside ...

Question About Snap Caps

I've seen a couple of different brands of snap caps in my travels. One brand's product looks transparant and you can see a spring inside and another I saw just looks like a red anodized solid aluminum round.

My question is: Do snap caps auto-extract? Sounds stupid I'm sure, but I've never used them so I don't know. The brands I've seen have 5 to a pack so either they get worn out easily and that's why you have extras or I'm missing something.

I don't know that I'd say the ones I've used "auto"-extract but they do extract when I rack the slide. (FYI: clear blue with visibility of internal spring). They can be great to have someone throw a couple in a few magazines randomly to practice a couple different scenarios... rack-tap-bang... confirm fundamentals... are you anticipating the break and subsequent shot and push pistol down... so on and so forth.

I have never had a snap cap from anybody that auto ejects. How is that suppose to happen? It takes blow back gases to jack the slide to eject a shell. No puny little spring is going to do that, at least not for me.

That's what I wa getting at - the automatic ejection of the snap cap the same way brass is ejected. I was thinking the same thing about the gasses being necessary, but I wasn't sure especially when I saw that spring. For all I knew maybe there was some serious spring tension that forced the process, but what do I know.

I like I idea of randomly loading them to go through failure drills. That's probably something that's otherwise hard to replicate. If I buy them that's something else I can do with them.

If they did eject on their own that would be cool though. Part of me had this vision of practicing at home as I went through a mag of 5 snap caps

Ok, here’s the deal. They’re both intended for training in the safe handling of ammo, loading, dry fire trigger drills, etc. The blue colored plastic version will wear sooner than the red alloy version. As such, the red alloy "A-Zoom's" are better suited for semi-autos due to the slide action/extraction wear. The blue plastic variants are Ok, and will last just as long in revolvers.

BTW: This is all based on my personal opinion and experience.
Regards,

Err...I think he meant that if the trigger is pulled, will the cap eject from the chamber??? (correct me if I'm wrong). This obviously does not happen.

Yes...brain fart here (if I sounded like I meant something else), I'm just thinking about racking the thing as if a drill.
Putting a snap cap somewhere in the mag to simulate a 'dud'...then doing the drill...is what I was referring to......it should come out just like any other 'dud'.